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from The Mara Crossing

by Ruth Padel

You go because you heard a cuckoo call. You go because
you’ve met someone, you made a vow, there are no more
grasshoppers. You go because the cold is coming, spring
is coming, soldiers are coming: plague, flood, an ice age,
a new religion, a new idea. You go because the world rotates,
because the world is changing and you’ve lost the key.
You go because you have the kingdom of heaven in your heart.
Or the kingdom of hell has taken over someone else’s heart.

You go because you have magnetite in your brain, thorax, tips
of your teeth. Because there’s food over the hill
and there’ll be gold, or more likely bauxite,
inside the hill. You go because your mother is dying
and only you can bring her the apples of the Hesperides.
You go because you need work.

You go because the astrologers say so. Because the sea
is calling and your best friend bought a motorbike
in America last year. You go because the streets are paved
with gold and your father went when he was your age.
You go because you have seventeen children and the Lord will provide,
because your sixteen brothers have parcelled up the land
and there’s none left for you. You go because the waters are rising,
an ice sheet is melting, the rivers are dry

there are no more fish in the sea. You go because God
has given you a sign – you had a dream – the potatoes are blighted.
Because it is too hot, too cold, you are on a quest for knowledge
and knowledge is always beyond. You go because it’s destiny,
because Pharoah won’t let you light candles on Friday at sundown.
Because you’re looking for

an enchanted lake, the meaning of life, a tall tree to nest in.
You go because travel is holy, because your body
is wired to go, you’d have a quite different body and different brain
if you were the sort of bird that stayed. You go
because you can’t pay the rent, creditors lie in wait for your children
after school. You go because Pharoah has hogged the oil,
electricity and paraffin, so all you have on your table
are candles, when you can get them.

You go because there’s nothing left to hope for.
Because there’s everything to hope for and all life is risk.
You go because someone put the evil eye on you
and barometric pressure is dropping. You go because
you can’t cope with your gift – other people can’t cope with your gift –
you have no gift and the barbarians are after you.

You go because the barbarians are gone, Herod
has turned off the internet and mobile phones, the modem
is useless and the eagles are coming. You go because the eagles
have died off with the vultures and the ancestors are angry
there’s no one to clean the bones. You go in peace. You go in war.
Someone has offered you a job. You go because the your dog
is going too. Because the Grand Vizier sent paramilitaries to your house last night,
you have to go quick and leave the dog behind.

You go because you’ve eaten the dog and that’s it, there’s nothing else.
You go because you’ve given up and might as well. Because your love
is dead, because she laughed at you, because she’s coming with you
it will be a big adventure and you’ll live happily ever after.
You go in hope, in faith, in haste, high spirits; deep
sorrow, deep snow, deep shit and without question.

You pause halfway to stoke up on Omega 3 and horseshoe crabs.
You go for phosphorus, myrtle-berries, salt. You go for oil
and pepper. It was your father’s dying wish.
You go from pole to pole, you go because you can,
you mate and sleep on the wing.
Because you need a place to shed your skin
in safety. You go with a thousand questions but you are growing up,
growing old, moving on. Say goodbye to the might-have-beens

you can’t step into the same river twice.
You go because hope, need and escape
are names for the same god. You go
because life is sweet, life is cheap, life is flux
and you can’t take it with you. You go because you’re alive,
because you’re dying, maybe dead already. You go because you must.

About this poem

Ruth Padel has published ten poetry collections, many of which have been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot, Forward or Costa Prizes, including her most recent, Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth (Chatto, 2014 – shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize). Highly acclaimed for her nature writing in her novel, Where the Serpent Lives, and her memoir of tiger conservation, Tigers in Red Weather, she also writes and presents BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Workshop. Her awards include a British Council Darwin Now research award, and First Prize in the National Poetry Competition. She is Poetry Fellow at King’s College London, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Council Member for the Zoological Society of London. Ruth won the National Poetry Competition in 1996 with her poem, 'Icicles Round a Tree in Dumfriesshire'.